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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Wednesday, January 08, 2014

CRYPTOLINK: Bigfoot Evidence Criteria

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

What should your criteria be when it comes to purported Bigfoot evidence?
Let’s start with what kind of evidence there is and then describe what makes some better than others. I will divide this topic into several different articles so they can be digested easier.

The most common is the eyewitness account. This is a person who claims to have come into visual range of a creature they believe is a Sasquatch. This evidence can be quite compelling because unless it is an outright lie, you usually have someone who is very excited because they believe they have witnessed something very few people can claim to have ever seen and a mythical creature to boot.

There is a certain element of shock that has to accompany this type of encounter that makes the retelling of it very convincing. As convincing as this can be however, there are several factors you must keep in mind if you are a critical thinker.
First off, as we have already mentioned, is this person telling you the truth and if so could they be omitting details that make their story more plausible such as was the lighting less than optimal when they had this encounter? I think that the majority of people who come forth with these types of stories are in fact telling the truth. For one, it can and does have an impact on a person’s reputation when they come forward with such a claim.

In the case of the anonymous story teller, there is much less to gauge truthfulness and even though we can understand why a person would choose to remain anonymous, we can only consider their story as just that, a story. In the case of the self-identified purporter, there are some very good reasons to ask the right questions as the audience to the claim.

The biggest hurdle you have to overcome as the listener is could this person have misidentified what they have seen? Questions to be asked should be, was it light or dark outside? How far away was this sighting from you? Are you familiar with other creatures that inhabit the area? Why were you in the location you were in when this sighting happened?

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